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Jewish World Review Nov. 21, 2000 / 23 Mar-Cheshvan, 5761
Chris Matthews
But you can't say this good party loyalist didn't do his bit
for JFK. Thanks to the high-octane electoral machine of
Mayor Richard Daley, the vote of "Edward Myles" was
counted that night with all the other Democratic loyalists
in the city's 4th Ward, 31st precinct, in a city with a
reputation for voting from beyond the grave.
Boss Daley knew he had the situation in hand.
"Mr. President, with a little bit of luck and the help of a
few close friends," he phoned Kennedy with the polls
closing, "you're going to carry Illinois.'
' As word spread of Daley's shenanigans that day, an
eavesdropping Benjamin Bradlee, of Newsweek, would
wonder at the deeper meaning of Daley's hard assurance.
Illinois was not the only scene of "irregularities" in the
Kennedy-Nixon fight. There were close tallies and
serious questions about the counts in Arkansas, Missouri,
New Mexico and Texas, home to Kennedy running mate
Lyndon Johnson.
"We had all kinds of evidence," Nixon's much-admired campaign chief Robert
Finch once recalled to me. "We had affidavits. It did not all turn on Illinois."
But demanding recounts, especially in Texas, which lacked a legal provision for
one, would have taken months. It would have created havoc in the country
poised in global combat with the burgeoning Soviet empire.
So in the days after his narrow loss to Kennedy, Nixon cried on the inside,
complained to friends, but said nothing in public. When the New York
Herald-Tribune's Earl Mazo began a series on election fraud, focused on
Illinois and Texas, Nixon urged him to kill it. The country, Mazo recalled him
saying, could not afford to be without a leader.
For Kennedy, even Nixon's silence was unsettling. He needed a public
validation of the country's decision, a formal certification of his election. Only
one man could give it to him.
The meeting was arranged by Kennedy's father. A man of hard-right
temperament, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy made a practice of cultivating
powerful friends. One of them was former president Herbert Hoover, a man
known to exercise considerable influence over Nixon. When Nixon got the call
from Hoover he was all too ready to oblige: He would follow Hoover's
counsel; he would do what was good for the country; he would meet with
Kennedy.
When the call came from Kennedy, Nixon was having dinner with his family
and campaign staff in Key Biscayne. When he offered to join Kennedy in Palm
Beach, his rival trumped with reality.
"No, I have a helicopter at my disposal, and it would be easier for me to come
to you."
The Kennedy-Nixon meeting achieved all that the visitor had hoped. It gave the
election a finality, the winner his victory, the country a fine, spiffy
changing-of-the-guard.
Through all the sunshine, glamour and popping flashbulbs, Nixon nursed his
sense of victimhood but never let it show.
"I asked him how he took Ohio," Kennedy joked to the crowd of reporters
afterward, "but he is saving it for 1964."
Richard Nixon never asked him, at least with reporters listening, how Daley
had out-stolen the rural Republican bosses to win Illinois.
When Nixon died in April 1994, Sen. Ted Kennedy paid tribute to this, his
most unsordid act: "Despite the intensity of the campaign and the narrow
outcome, he accepted the results with grace and without rancor."
For the Kennedys, who loved to quote Hemingway's definition of courage as
"grace under pressure," this was tribute indeed.
"Ask not what your country can do for you," John F. Kennedy said in his
inaugural address. "Ask what you can do for your country."
The man who could have rained on Jack Kennedy's great inaugural words had
stood just a few feet away applauding them, and in this brief, shining moment,
honoring
11/15/00: U.S. politcal geography: One nation, divisible
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